At this point, how much of Civ4 (multiplayer in particular) has been solved? On the gameplay side, dominant pieces of the puzzle have emerged (India, Financial, blockades, elephants, just to name a few), such that those strategies are banned outright, or the game has been changed to balance them (RBMod). The same process has emerged with diplomacy (NAPs to run a farmer's "gambit", dogpiling the player in first and/or the "best" player), except that we don't have a way to change those tactics without banning out-of-game communication entirely with AI Diplo. Is there some diplomacy method between full and AI diplo that has been tried and works well?
With regard to lurking, it seems like there are three problems:
1. Teams are treating the thread as communication between teammates first and as actual reporting second (thus the overload of diplo--the teammates can just look in the game themselves for any detailed information)
2. Good reporting is hard and takes a lot of effort, especially when you don't know if anyone is reading it.
3. People don't know how to report games anymore, due to the lack of Epics/Adventures recently (and the lack of participation in the recent ones)
Problem 1 seems like it would be fixed by having games with less diplo (and thus having less out-of-game information to communicate), but that doesn't seems to be the case in recent games as much. However, it seems like this could also be solved by people joining fewer games. Problem 3 would be solved if people knew how to report--maybe we need to make an Adventure that focuses more on the report than the actual game? Random idea--have competitors play a save up to a certain point, write a report (likely with a word and/or picture limit), then each competitor gets a random report and has to recreate and/or critique the game based on the report? I have no idea how that would work, or if it would be any fun--it just popped into my head as a possible solution. I don't know how to help with problem 2, though if people are playing fewer games, it could mean there are more lurkers and/or dedicated lurkers, leading to more incentive to write reports.
With regard to the "sub-optimal" play, I think part of the problem is that the "optimal" strategies are very, very scattered between the various games--sure, ideas like Slavery and Financial being good are found in most basic strategy guides, but stuff at the edges (like all the information that can be gleaned from C&D) can't be found easily without either seeing it in real time when it was originally posted, or asking other people (who generally point you to a game, in a thread full of many things other than the thing you're looking for). Is there a central repository for all this stuff I'm missing?
With regard to lurking, it seems like there are three problems:
1. Teams are treating the thread as communication between teammates first and as actual reporting second (thus the overload of diplo--the teammates can just look in the game themselves for any detailed information)
2. Good reporting is hard and takes a lot of effort, especially when you don't know if anyone is reading it.
3. People don't know how to report games anymore, due to the lack of Epics/Adventures recently (and the lack of participation in the recent ones)
Problem 1 seems like it would be fixed by having games with less diplo (and thus having less out-of-game information to communicate), but that doesn't seems to be the case in recent games as much. However, it seems like this could also be solved by people joining fewer games. Problem 3 would be solved if people knew how to report--maybe we need to make an Adventure that focuses more on the report than the actual game? Random idea--have competitors play a save up to a certain point, write a report (likely with a word and/or picture limit), then each competitor gets a random report and has to recreate and/or critique the game based on the report? I have no idea how that would work, or if it would be any fun--it just popped into my head as a possible solution. I don't know how to help with problem 2, though if people are playing fewer games, it could mean there are more lurkers and/or dedicated lurkers, leading to more incentive to write reports.
With regard to the "sub-optimal" play, I think part of the problem is that the "optimal" strategies are very, very scattered between the various games--sure, ideas like Slavery and Financial being good are found in most basic strategy guides, but stuff at the edges (like all the information that can be gleaned from C&D) can't be found easily without either seeing it in real time when it was originally posted, or asking other people (who generally point you to a game, in a thread full of many things other than the thing you're looking for). Is there a central repository for all this stuff I'm missing?